RuPaul's Drag Race Gets Schooled on Sensitivity

RuPaul’s Drag Race has announced that it will stop using the word she-male. The show, now
in its sixth season, had always had a regular feature called “You’ve Got
She-Mail,” where Ru addresses her “girls” via a televised message, but got into
trouble because of a segment called “Female or She-Male” where the competitors
had to guess who was a “real” woman. That was the breaking point for many
activists, including two former contestants who have since transitioned, and RuPaul has made the right
decision.

That this particular episode
and the pushback are
taking place almost exclusively within the LGBT community, where RuPaul has
millions of fans but no small number of detractors, is interesting. It’s not
hard to see tension between gay male drag queens and transgender women who feel
more than a little dehumanized by callous drag, especially when the rest of
America doesn’t see much difference and the internet is already awash in
“she-male” porn. (To be clear, draq-queen-versus-trans-woman is a big difference. Also, if you’re
cisgender, meaning the opposite of transgender, you shouldn’t call anyone a tranny, either.)

Still, it’s not as though all
trans people are demanding that Logo #CancelRuPaul, and it’s important to
remember that LGBT history is bizarrely full of scolds and puritans who want
nothing more than to airbush out or silence anything flamboyant, hypersexual, or
weird. Writer and trans activist Andrea James wrote a lengthy defense of RuPaul
that points out how trans homophobia can be just as noxious as gay transphobia,
although the latter has much more power to marginalize.

To accuse RuPaul of being
transphobic is, in a way, almost to admit that he definitely isn’t, unless you
want to go all the way to “Drag is oppressive.” Few people have promoted the
acceptance of non-gender-conforming people as much as RuPaul, which makes him a
lightning rod for criticism – especially from anyone for whom being an ally
means being the one who should know better. Insensitive jokes can stand out
against a professional lifetime’s worth of good, but crossing the line is inevitable
when you’re a satirist or provocateur.

Really, though, it’s pretty
simple. If Group X says a word hurts, and you’re not part of Group X, just don’t
use the word. Whether or not a particular mode of oppression was new to you
doesn’t mean anything. People have pointed out that “She-Mail” is actually a
pun, a self-aware twist by one of the most fabulous queers of all time. OK, but
how many times can jokes get repeated before the laughs are spent? And have you
thrown niggardly around lately?
Considering the precarious position of trans people and the law, swatting
concerns away with “Can’t you take a joke?” isn’t going to fly this time. That
move to overturn AB 1266 by referendum – which is to say, to ask the voters of California whether or not transgender children can use the bathroom– failed, but only barely.

Of course, the best course of
action is always to assume positive intent, and correct mistakes as they happen
(unless someone is, you know, shrieking, “Kill all the faggots!”). That might
sound suspiciously like urging people to have empathy for their oppressors, but
we’re all human. RuPaul did the right thing here, and quickly. Probably because
most activists did, too.